mgshamster:No one weather event can be attributed to climate change. Climate change (aka global warming) is about change of the climate over time and across the globe. It is not about local weather events.

Which is what the article says:

Can we attribute this particular heat wave to an anthropogenic impact on the climate? The only safe answer is, well, probably not. It's like if I flip one coin and it comes up heads, that doesn't mean the coin is loaded.

But what we're seeing now, there seems to be a trend toward more hot extremes and fewer cold extremes. That's a pattern that's consistent with an anthropogenically-forced increase in temperatures.

For example, you're probably very bad at math. Or maybe just thinking in general.

No, he's merely commenting on the vast amounts of posts that seem to follow this trend.

If it's warmer than usual out, people start blaming global warming. Other people shrug and just say it happens, that's weather. Global warming people insist that hotter temps = global warming.

When it's colder than usual out, other people say it's because there's no global warming as a way of poking fun at the folks in the above example. The first group then get indignant and says that just because it's colder than usual doesn't mean global warming isn't happening and launch into long winded explanations about why individual weather patterns aren't counted when talking about global climate changes.

Either individual weather patterns on a given day are indicative of "global warming" or they aren't. People need to be consistent and stop spouting off an argument of convenience just because it happens to agree with their viewpoint at a given juncture in time. Everyone else tends to notice the inconsistency and it weakens the position.

This applies even if someone picks a side that is "right". If they are an utterly spectacular failure at understanding and properly explaining *why* they are right.... they won't be, because they won't actually be explaining what is truly happening. Only their "messed-up-half-heard-and-badly-told-version" that includes purple monkey dishwashers.

meat0918:"But what we're seeing now, there seems to be a trend toward more hot extremes and fewer cold extremes. That's a pattern that's consistent with an anthropogenically-forced increase in temperatures. "

Keep farking that chicken subby

coorelation =/= causation

He said it would fit that model."Seems to be a trend" - Not going to bother explaining the key word here...

"consistent with an anthropogenically-forced increase " - As opposed to "with the anthro'"

(keep reading)

mongbiohazard:Way to go subby. You stopped reading the article before it contradicted your headline, dumbass.

see aboveIt was not contradictory.The whole thing, IN context:Not every roll of a loaded die will come up six-but sixes will occur more often than if the die had not been tampered with. Is that still the thinking?Can we attribute this particular heat wave to an anthropogenic impact on the climate? The only safe answer is, well, probably not. It's like if I flip one coin and it comes up heads, that doesn't mean the coin is loaded.But what we're seeing now, there seems to be a trend toward more hot extremes and fewer cold extremes. That's a pattern that's consistent with an anthropogenically-forced increase in temperatures.

The underlined part is subbies headline, more or less, and it is correct. The whole "seems/an" is speculation, and he know's it, that's why he phrased it that way. This is how real scientists talk when discussing theoretical situations.Summation:Probably not, but there is a possibility, IF other things were more concrete, we could judge better.

1. Then why does the graph start at 1890? To hide the trend from 1850 to 1890 when there was negligable anthropomorphic CO2 but temps still rose.

I'm not sure what the reason is. It may be due to wanting all the records to be complete in the plot. However, I suggest making up a reason for it and assuming it to be true, as you have done, isn't the wisest course, especially since anthropogenic CO2 concentrations remained quite low well until the mid 20th century.

I'm sorry, but it was your claim, besides the fact that it is very difficult for me to prove a negative. Again, James Hansen was born in 1941 and probably wasn't making claims about cooling during the 40's and 50's, and hasn't made any claims to that effect since.

THE GREAT NAME:3. An exponential rise was the prediction. Stop moving the goal posts.

I'm sorry, but this isn't the claim. Never has been. Maybe what would help would be to note that "accelerating" isn't the same as "exponential". In addition, to be fair, there's lots of misguided people out there prone to hyperbole. I'm sure there are people out there claiming such, but you really ought to distinguish between scientific knowledge versus the diversity of opinions you find in the public discourse.

THE GREAT NAME:Damnhippyfreak: The simplest answer would be to note that the fact that the climate has changed for different reasons in the past does not somehow mean that the current anthropogenic trend does not exist.

This is a big cheat. Nobody is saying that the existence of previous fluctuations invalidates AGW directly.What we are saying is that it invalidates the argument that the 1978-1998 warming period can only be explained anthropogenically.

I don't think you're going to find any research that states that said trend is solely due to anthropogenic factors. However, what has been found is that warming trend cannot be explained without anthropogenic factors.

THE GREAT NAME:The existance of natural fluctuations make the recent rise unsurprising, and insufficient to support the theory. We're saying you need some other empirical support, and we're still waiting for it.

The first part is reasonable, and points out the limitations of correlation as opposed to more direct measure of causality. There's only so much you can say from looking at trends without trying to decompose the relative contribution of the underlying processes and mechanisms.

That aside, I respectfully suggest that the information you are waiting for already exists - any of the literature dealing with forcing factors and climate sensitivity is an attempt at causation. Maybe you've seen this old chestnut (from the IPCC AR4) posted here before:

In short, don't make the mistake of assuming one's state of knowledge (and what is presented in the popular media) is commensurate with that of the extant literature.

THE GREAT NAME:Farking Canuck: So what do you deniers have to say about the period from 1940 to 1950?

If there are any "deniers" about, user Farking Canuck wants to hear from you.

<graph>

Your graph cuts off half the recent trend, and has a highly exaggerated vertical scale in order to make the warming look bigger than it is. On that scale, any actual problematic warming would be way, way off the top of the graph. A bit misleading I would say.

Keep in mind that the global instrumental record, which is what that graph is portraying, starts in the mid 1850s or 1880s. It wasn't a choice on the part of whomever made that graph. That aside, note that it is accepted practice to use all the available space when making a plot. Also note that if you're trying to determine what "problematic warming" is by how far the line graphically extends in a plot (instead of the underlying numbers), you may be grossly oversimplifying things.

THE GREAT NAME:If your anti-science machine had been running back then you would have been screaming "Were cooling now ... the warming is over!". And yet the overall trend was still warming.

Actually James Hansen, high-ranking climatologist from NASA was saying there was catestrophic global colling in action. It was "your lot" who jumped on the small cooling trend and tried to make something big out of it. Sceptics were sceptical, and turned out to be correct.

You're going to have to back up the bit in bold in some way given the obvious fact that Hansen wasn't publishing back then, and to my knowledge has not many any claim as to "catestrophic global colling" [sic] at any time.

THE GREAT NAME:In fact, our current little flat spot is completely dwarfed by the cooling period in the 40s and by the overall trend. But these facts don't even slow down your denier rhetoric at all do they??

Thanks to your misleading graph, which I have discussed already.

By the way, if you look at the data from before your cherry-picked start date, you'll see a warming trend going back since before any significant human CO2 emissions. It's commonly referred to as the recovery from the little ice age, but that isn't important (it's really just a low-frequency component of underlying natural fluctuations in the climate). What is important is that in order to demonstrate catastrophic AGW, climatists have to show an unprecidentedly rapid exponential rise - not just point at a trend that was underway anyway. The current flat period, so carefully hidden in your misleading plot, strongly refutes this. AGW is dead.

Just to get it out of the way, anthropogenic climate change does not mean an "exponential rise".

That out of the way, the more important issue is to note that it is very difficult to attribute a specific cause to a change if different processes are working simultaneously and therefore their relative contributions are conflated. What may also help is to note that these different processes are not mutually exclusive - that we are coming out of an ice age does not mean that anthropogenic climate change does not exist, for example. Therefore, an exploration of the underlying mechanisms and processes is what is required, and is the basis for attribution of anthropogenic climate change.

THE GREAT NAME:This is a big cheat. Nobody is saying that the existence of previous fluctuations invalidates AGW directly. What we are saying is that it invalidates the argument that the 1978-1998 warming period can only be explained anthropogenically. The existance of natural fluctuations make the recent rise unsurprising, and insufficient to support the theory. We're saying you need some other empirical support, and we're still waiting for it.

There are thousands of papers that present evidence supporting the theory that the current warming is due to AGW. The vast majority of peer reviewed papers in the relevant journals supports this. The fact that you refuse to or are unable to read them is nobody's fault but your own.

Joe Blowme:Farking Canuck: THE GREAT NAME: ctually, what sceptics really do is to look at the longer trend, and see that there is a knee point (a change in trend) at around 1998. It is this really obvious change in slope that makes 1998 of interest to sceptics. Not cherry-picking. We are simply looking a the data and acknowledging what is there.

So what do you deniers have to say about the period from 1940 to 1950?

[www.skepticalscience.com image 500x375]

If your anti-science machine had been running back then you would have been screaming "Were cooling now ... the warming is over!". And yet the overall trend was still warming.

In fact, our current little flat spot is completely dwarfed by the cooling period in the 40s and by the overall trend. But these facts don't even slow down your denier rhetoric at all do they??

No one is denying climate changes, but are contesting its man made or co2 caused. can you explain all the climate changes since the planet formed? Were dinos driving suvs that made teh planet hot? What made it cool to ice age? Then warm back up and do it all over again? Surely you have reached a "consensus" by now right? that = facts in todays world right?

The simplest answer would be to note that the fact that the climate has changed for different reasons in the past does not somehow mean that the current anthropogenic trend does not exist.

Farking Canuck:THE GREAT NAME: ctually, what sceptics really do is to look at the longer trend, and see that there is a knee point (a change in trend) at around 1998. It is this really obvious change in slope that makes 1998 of interest to sceptics. Not cherry-picking. We are simply looking a the data and acknowledging what is there.

So what do you deniers have to say about the period from 1940 to 1950?

[www.skepticalscience.com image 500x375]

If your anti-science machine had been running back then you would have been screaming "Were cooling now ... the warming is over!". And yet the overall trend was still warming.

In fact, our current little flat spot is completely dwarfed by the cooling period in the 40s and by the overall trend. But these facts don't even slow down your denier rhetoric at all do they??

No one is denying climate changes, but are contesting its man made or co2 caused. can you explain all the climate changes since the planet formed? Were dinos driving suvs that made teh planet hot? What made it cool to ice age? Then warm back up and do it all over again? Surely you have reached a "consensus" by now right? that = facts in todays world right?

THE GREAT NAME:ctually, what sceptics really do is to look at the longer trend, and see that there is a knee point (a change in trend) at around 1998. It is this really obvious change in slope that makes 1998 of interest to sceptics. Not cherry-picking. We are simply looking a the data and acknowledging what is there.

So what do you deniers have to say about the period from 1940 to 1950?

If your anti-science machine had been running back then you would have been screaming "Were cooling now ... the warming is over!". And yet the overall trend was still warming.

In fact, our current little flat spot is completely dwarfed by the cooling period in the 40s and by the overall trend. But these facts don't even slow down your denier rhetoric at all do they??

THE GREAT NAME:Farking Canuck: THE GREAT NAME: Climatists say we should ignore that peopk because it is inconvenient to them (it contributes to the downward trend seen in the ensuing years.

More lies.

Scientists say that it is dishonest to choose an outlier point as a starting point to artificially manufacture a downward trend. Actually, this is what statisticians will tell you (no matter what the data set). When trying to plot a trend you use all the data available, including 1998.

But extremely dishonest people will plot all their trend starting at 1998.

Do you see any graphs truncated at 1998 in this thread?

Actually, what sceptics really do is to look at the longer trend, and see that there is a knee point (a change in trend) at around 1998. It is this really obvious change in slope that makes 1998 of interest to sceptics. Not cherry-picking. We are simply looking a the data and acknowledging what is there.

Also you have not addressed my point, which is that TFA wants to tell us this year is "consistent" with AGW (mealy mouthed deniable wording for "supports") but warmist alarmists want very warm years deleted from the data when they are inconvenient. I take it you accept my point?

Mealy mouthed? Lol.

"Consistent with" is a phrase used all the time in the sciences. To claim otherwise means you are either very ignorant of the language used in the scientific community, you're a troll, or both.

You probably don't even care, because you're likely just trolling, so this post is for others who are reading and might actually have intellectual curiosity.

For example, you're probably very bad at math. Or maybe just thinking in general.

No, he's merely commenting on the vast amounts of posts that seem to follow this trend.

If it's warmer than usual out, people start blaming global warming. Other people shrug and just say it happens, that's weather. Global warming people insist that hotter temps = global warming.

When it's colder than usual out, other people say it's because there's no global warming as a way of poking fun at the folks in the above example. The first group then get indignant and says that just because it's colder than usual doesn't mean global warming isn't happening and launch into long winded explanations about why individual weather patterns aren't counted when talking about global climate changes.

Either individual weather patterns on a given day are indicative of "global warming" or they aren't. People need to be consistent and stop spouting off an argument of convenience just because it happens to agree with their viewpoint at a given juncture in time. Everyone else tends to notice the inconsistency and it weakens the position.

This applies even if someone picks a side that is "right". If they are an utterly spectacular failure at understanding and properly explaining *why* they are right.... they won't be, because they won't actually be explaining what is truly happening. Only their "messed-up-half-heard-and-badly-told-version" that includes purple monkey dishwashers.

Climate Change encompasses all types of unusual weather patterns - not simply the warm ones. Unusual blizzards and ice storms are totally consistent with climate change. Anyone that tries to explain these types of events differently than the warmer events has a poor understanding of climate change.

Just to clarify: I'm not saying that a particular event is caused by climate change. I'm saying that climate change creates a myriad of extreme weather events.

THE GREAT NAME:Climatists say we should ignore that peopk because it is inconvenient to them (it contributes to the downward trend seen in the ensuing years.

More lies.

Scientists say that it is dishonest to choose an outlier point as a starting point to artificially manufacture a downward trend. Actually, this is what statisticians will tell you (no matter what the data set). When trying to plot a trend you use all the data available, including 1998.

But extremely dishonest people will plot all their trend starting at 1998.

jso2897:Yeah, right, you dumbass monkey-f**kers. If "global warming" can't be proven in every detail and fifty years into the future, and to your scientifically ignorant satisfaction, that means it's intelligent to keep making our energy by digging shiat up and burning it, like cavemen. Stupid, greedy, lazy apes deserve to go extinct.

Remember that many of the predictions coming from supposed experts at the top of climatology were for exponential rises - in other words, not only were the temperatures supposed to keep going up, but actually get faster and faster. Instead we get 16 years of slightly falling temps. Do you really call that a little detail?

Sure, they could go up again in 50 years. Hostory shows (after you throw away Mann's thouroughly-falsified hockey stick graph) that climate fluctuates chaotically on virtually all time scales. So (unless a pattern is found) we have no way to say. But the AGW theory has made it's predictions and they have failed to come true, not in some little detail, but by a godam mile. They are way outside their own error margins. The game is over, so stop running around with those goal-posts - everybody else has gone home.

whatshisname:mgshamster: No one weather event can be attributed to climate change. Climate change (aka global warming) is about change of the climate over time and across the globe. It is not about local weather events.

Which is what the article says:

Can we attribute this particular heat wave to an anthropogenic impact on the climate? The only safe answer is, well, probably not. It's like if I flip one coin and it comes up heads, that doesn't mean the coin is loaded.

But what we're seeing now, there seems to be a trend toward more hot extremes and fewer cold extremes. That's a pattern that's consistent with an anthropogenically-forced increase in temperatures.

A hundred years of warming, and we've been using oil for half of that time? How unusual is a hundred years of warming?

meat0918:"But what we're seeing now, there seems to be a trend toward more hot extremes and fewer cold extremes. That's a pattern that's consistent with an anthropogenically-forced increase in temperatures. "

Keep farking that chicken subby

I don't see how they arrive at that conclusion. Comparing current weather to weather 100-600 years ago is a little misleading as there was an actual increase in global temperatures that appeared to end in the 90s. I think the question of interest, is why did this happen, even when population growth, industrialization, and emission of greenhouse gases increased at a breathtaking rate during that time? It appears to contradict the whole anthropomorphic climate change theory but no one seems to even want to acknowledge it may be a possibility. I know how things work and a lot of these guys are funded by grants. The possibility of anthropomorphic climate change killing us all keeps the people in fear and research money rolling in.

What I see as the biggest threat to humanity is the explosive growth in the human population. Population cant keep doubling every 30 odd years or so before a tipping point is reached, but I don't see how you can stop it.

Scientists never say this ... denier's always insist that this is said but that is just their dishonesty.

1. Global warming defenders ALWAYS SAY "weather isn't climate" when challengers point out record coldsnaps. Always!2. Same defenders and scarestream media ALWAYS say 1997 is the hottest year on record. And never mention all the years that it was colder.3. All the hottest year on record people who cite imperfect measurements that don't take into factors like solar changes, underwater volcanos, etc. Unless it's a mitigating factor like Mount Punatubo then that cooling factor MUST be mentioned.

Pretty hot here in BC after our monsoon season this June. The last 4 June-uaries here have been frosty cold and snowy up high here and deluges in the valleys....so I am kinda OK with this present weather pattern.

The author is someone who writes for Nat Geo, but they're talking to a guy who is a Research Associate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, where he conducts fundamental research in statistical climatology. So, I'm guessing he has some data.

For example, you're probably very bad at math. Or maybe just thinking in general.

Or perhaps you're so defensive that you think it's about math. Every global warming thread has a mandatory weather doesn't equal climate posting. Or are you saying I'm bad at math because my cellphone doesn't have a "not equal to" key? Oooooh that backslash is so annoying!

whatshisname:mgshamster: No one weather event can be attributed to climate change. Climate change (aka global warming) is about change of the climate over time and across the globe. It is not about local weather events.

Which is what the article says:

Can we attribute this particular heat wave to an anthropogenic impact on the climate? The only safe answer is, well, probably not. It's like if I flip one coin and it comes up heads, that doesn't mean the coin is loaded.

But what we're seeing now, there seems to be a trend toward more hot extremes and fewer cold extremes. That's a pattern that's consistent with an anthropogenically-forced increase in temperatures.